146 STEPPES AND DESERTS. 



" The Greeks only began at a very late date to rival the 

 Phoenicians and Carthaginians in navigation. They visited 

 the coasts of the Atlantic it is true, but never appear to have 

 penetrated far into the ocean. I doubt whether they ever 

 saw the Canaries and the Peak of Teneriife. They believed 

 that Atlas, which their poets and legends described as a 

 very high mountain placed at the western limit of the earth, 

 must be sought on the west coast of Africa. It was placed 

 there also by their later geographers, Strabo, Ptolemy, and 

 others. As there is not any single mountain distinguished 

 by its elevation in north-western Africa, the true situation 

 of Mount Atlas has been a subject of perplexity; and it has 

 been sought, sometimes on the coast, sometimes in the inte- 

 rior, sometimes near the Mediterranean, and sometimes 

 further towards the south. It became the custom (in the 

 first century of our era, when the Roman arms penetrated 

 into the interior of Mauritania and Numidia,) to give the 

 name of Atlas to the African chain of mountains which 

 runs from west to east almost parallel with the coast of the 

 Mediterranean. Pliny and Solinus were, however, very 

 sensible that the descriptions of Mount Atlas given by the 

 Greek and Roman poets were not applicable to this long 

 mountain chain ; and they therefore thought it necessary to 

 transfer the Atlas, of which they gave a picturesque descrip- 

 tion in accordance with the poetic legends, to the terra 

 incognita of Central Africa. According to what has been 

 said, the Atlas of Homer and Hesiod can only be the Peak 

 of TenerifFe; and the Atlas of the Greek and Roman 

 geographers must be in Northern Africa." 



